SPENDING IT

Heads or Tails, a Star Investor Will Fill His Pockets

By TIMOTHY MIDDLETON

Published: November 24, 1996

THERE are some people you just don't want to encounter on the opposite side of the table when you are making a deal. They are savvy business people who always seem to know when a market has bottomed out and when it has peaked. If they are buying, you sure hate to be selling.

For many investors, Michael F. Price has been that kind of guy. A renowned value investor who runs the Mutual Series funds, Mr. Price has a knack for finding investments that are undervalued. Likewise, some investors say, when he decides to sell it may be a sign that an investment is fully valued.

So coin collectors, take note. After a couple of decades of collecting, Mr. Price is selling his entire cache of ancient Greek and Roman coins. The collection, in gold and silver, has been assigned a presale value of $1.5 million to $2 million.

The estimate could prove low. ''When you have a good collection and sell it together, it always generates more money,'' said Eric McFadden, director of Seaby Coins in London.

Even so, it will be chump change to Mr. Price, who late last month sold his Mutual Series of five mutual funds to Franklin Resources for more than $600 million and a contingency that could add $200 million to the total over a few years. He bought the fund business, known as Heine Securities of Short Hills, N.J., for about $4 million in 1988. Some observers considered his decision yet another sign that the boom in mutual funds had reached its zenith.

Though Mr. Price, 45, has been buying paintings for a new home, he denied that the coin sale signaled a switch in his personal life to serious art collecting. ''I pretty much accomplished what I wanted to,'' he said of the coin business.

''I want to find some other thing to do now -- just like with my business -- and I have no idea what,'' added Mr. Price, who was recently divorced.

The prices of rare coins have traditionally moved in the same direction as those of other hard assets, like real estate, fine art and precious metals. But they have moved more independently in recent years. Along with bullion, the market for gold and silver coins peaked around 1980 and fell as inflation subsided. Since then, volatility has diminished.

''The market's been relatively stable over the last dozen years,'' Mr. McFadden said.

But in that narrow range, prices have been climbing of late. ''After 1991, prices went down 10 percent to 15 percent,'' said Harvey Stack, whose Stack's Rare Coins of West 57th Street in Manhattan will sell the Price collection at auction on Dec. 3. ''They're now back up, and we're hoping they're better'' than they were that year, when Nelson Bunker Hunt sold a much bigger and more valuable collection.

The American Numismatic Association, of Colorado Springs, puts coin collectors' transactions at about $1 billion a year. Ancient coins, those minted before A.D. 1000, account for perhaps $100 million to $200 million of that activity, Mr. McFadden said.

Discoveries this decade have greatly increased the supply of old coins, causing prices to fall, especially for the more common Greek coins, some of which can be had for $10. The ancients buried their wealth instead of banking it, and troves of 1,000 to 5,000 coins have turned up in Europe with the advent of powerful metal detectors.

Edward Milas, owner of the Rare Coin Company of America in Willowbrook, Ill., said he sold his personal collection five years ago. ''The very rare coins, the very high-quality coins, still bring good prices,'' he said. ''But for the most part the ancient market has suffered because of the magnitude of coins that have come onto the market.''

THE Price collection includes 257 coins, many of exceptional beauty and rarity, minted between the sixth century B.C. and the seventh century A.D. ''The quality of the sale is magnificent,'' said Ira Goldberg, a senior executive of Superior Stamp and Coin in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Coins representing the first 12 Roman Caesars are the backbone of the collection. A real prize is a gold aureus issued by Octavian, which could bring $80,000 to $100,000. ''This coin is very difficult to obtain in silver, and he's got one in gold,'' said Richard Giedroyc, international editor of Coin World, a hobbyists' magazine published in Sidney, Ohio.

The Price sale kicks off a week of activity for coin collectors. There will be several auctions, followed by the New York International Numismatic Convention, Dec. 6 to 8 at the World Trade Center.

The market, however, is not being invaded by speculators. ''What we're seeing is a lot of collector interest -- not investors and dealers,'' Mr. Goldberg said. ''And that in itself tells you you're not at the top of the market.''

Mr. Milas, of the Rare Coin Company, concurred. ''I feel this is not a prime time to be a seller,'' he said, ''but really a better time to be a buyer.''

But in a book by Peter Tanous called ''Investment Gurus,'' to be published early next year by the New York Institute of Finance, Mr. Price describes how you never want to be buying what the smart people -- George Soros, the Pritzkers and the Tisches, to name a few -- are selling. Lovely as these old coins may be to hold, ardent believers in Mr. Price's strategy may well conclude that now is probably not a good time to buy ancient coins for investment purposes.

Photos: One highlight of Michael F. Price's collection of ancient coins is a silver tetradrachm, shown at right and below, minted in Greece in 405 B.C. It has a full-face portrait of Apollo on one side and a kinetic chariot race on the other. The presale value assigned by the auction house is $35,000 to $45,000.; Mr. Price will sell his entire coin collection at auction on Dec. 3 through Stack's Rare Coins. Lawrence Stack, a friend of Mr. Price since childhood, speculated that the investor paid $1.5 million for the coins over the years and estimated that they would bring as much as $2 million.; One prize in the collection is a gold aureus issued by Octavian, with his portrait on one side and an engraving of a crocodile on the other. Minted in January of 27 B.C., it celebrates his defeat of Anthony and Cleopatra. The aureus could bring $80,000 to $100,000. Stack's said Mr. Price paid $70,000 to $80,000 for it a few years ago. (Jonathan Levine)